and the coward he ran
by tombombadillo
Summary: Four shots. One conspiracy. (warning: character death)


**I've been meaning to write this for a while, but it's been stuck in my head for a while and it wouldn't come out. Be warned, it's angsty and horrible, and born of a bad mood and a good song (Kiss It All Better, by He is We). I think it's a perfectly suited song for a conspiracy theory and an angry man.**

**Disclaimer: I've spent the past two days watching disaster movie after zombie movie after disaster movie and crying about the fact I want Castle AU's of them all**

* * *

_and she cried_

_kiss it all better_

_i'm not ready to let go_

_it's not your fault love_

_you didn't know, you didn't know_

* * *

Ryan and Esposito thought that something had freaked him out.

Castle respects their decision, he's known them for almost seven years and they've never steered him wrong, but he believes something else.

Kate had dropped it. Completely. She'd said that she'd get him eventually, that he'd trip up and make a mistake and when he did she would be there. Except the time never came, days and months passed and engagements were made and he watched her walk down the aisle on her fathers arm. His mother was dropping hints about more grandchildren, and neither he nor Kate were refuting her sometimes blunt questioning. Bracken hadn't been forgotten, at all. Just simply put on aback back burner in favour of something better.

Only he didn't know that.

Castle thinks Bracken got fed up with her holding the shred of a file over his head. Got fed up with someone lesser in stature having more power.

That's why he hired him.

He. Unknown. Lying in wait on a rooftop. Finger curled around a trigger. Waiting.

* * *

The cell is dark. He's still not used to it, even though he's been here for almost a month and a half already. It's not his loft, it's not his bed. This isn't his life. This was never supposed to be how he lived out his remaining years.

"You didn't have to kill him."

It's the same question. Every day. He can barely see her most of the time, she's shadowy and lurks in the corner. Sometimes he gets the scent of cherries, sometimes the high notes of her laughter, airy and free and slightly unsettling. He sees her, hears her, smells her better if he doesn't directly focus on her. Look slightly to her left he can pick up the highlights in her hair, the curve and swell of her waist and hip and if he's lucky there's the gleam of her eyes in the dark.

Every day, she asks him, and everyday he ignores her.

* * *

He remembers they were outside the butchers. Looking for a turkey for Thanksgiving, and he'd wanted the biggest and the best and the most expensive. Kate had rolled her eyes at him. The last time she'd done it. He has the memory burnt into his retinas. Just her, really. She'd had her hair half tied back, the rest loose about her shoulders. He loves it like that. That was her hair for the wedding. Simple and beautiful and elegant. And then she'd started talking about how size doesn't matter and she'd thrown him one of those delightfully sinful looks, opened her mouth to say something equally sinful, and instead she'd made this little gasping noise, and jerked forward slightly her hand reaching out to catch herself on the window.

Whatever flirtatiousness and salaciousness had been in her eyes had been instantly replaced by fear. Raw and unbridled, running like wild fire in her veins, reaching every cell in her body, paralysing them, each in turn. She'd slumped sideways, away from him, collapsing on the floor like a rag doll. The last time this had happened he had a strange hope. Some underlying belief that she'd be okay. He'd held onto that, it had kept him going, all through the surgery and the months afterwards. But now, outside a butchers with giant hulks of meat hanging in the window, trying to crawl over to her bleeding body, all he feels is a terrible sense of desperation.

He doesn't remember much about after. It's all blurry, a frenzied anguish as he tries in vain to staunch the bleeding. So much of it. Too much of it. Her mouth opens and closes, stammers on letters and the beginnings of words, jumbles of _I love you I'm sorry love I love you_. A thin stream of blood creeps its way over her bottom lip, runs down her cheek and onto her shirt. Grey cotton, turning brown. She coughs and there's more of it, clogging her throat and clogging his. Surely someone has phoned an ambulance. Surely _somebody_ must have seen what's happened. Surely.

Her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks, long thin shadows that only emphasise her rapidly paling skin. Whatever breath she can take, whatever oxygen that floods into her lungs sounds corrupt, wrong, and broken. Her hands press against his chest as if by holding onto him, using him as anchor, she'll be able to hold on. Keep her broken heart beating long enough for a doctor to work their magic.

Except life has never been that simple, and he's never been particularly good at staying afloat himself.

* * *

He spends most of the time lying on his bed. Curled up, his knees pressed to his chest. They complain when he unfurls his body, when he stretches, but it's nothing new. Every part of him hurts now. His brain over thinks, his body overworks, but he feels empty inside. There's nothing in him any more. He's been blessed with pens and paper, though he's not sure how. He didn't think they'd let prisoners have them, considering their risk. But he's too tired to use them anyway. He has no motivation. What inspiration can he get from the same four walls?

At the trial he pleaded guilty. There was no point in arguing. He'd been stood there - gun in hand - Kate's gun in his hand - looming over the body. Dead body. It was an open and shut case. Twenty five to life. His lawyer didn't bother putting up a fight. There's a lot to be said when one of the highest paid lawyers in the city has no hope of getting him out of this. He's not sure he wanted to get out of it. A lifetime in prison versus a lifetime in an empty house. Alexis is… Alexis, she visits. She tries, but he can see the strain in her eyes. He doesn't know what it's like in the outside world anymore, doesn't know what the newspapers have said, what they are saying, he has no idea how people are treating her.

He doesn't know how people treat him in here. He has free time, like everyone else, but he has no interest in using it. He doesn't care about the gym, or the library, or the swimming pool, the games room. He doesn't know who his neighbours are, or even the name of the guard who brings him his meals when he doesn't go to the cafeteria. He expects people hate him though. For what he did. Senator Bracken, who on the outside seemed like the perfect guy, who helps everyone, murdered in apparent cold blood. They didn't know. None of them knew.

* * *

Her last breath rips his heart out of his chest.

Her hands slip, one thudding to the ground, the other getting caught in his jacket.

He hears a scream, long and ragged and bereft, and it's not until later, when someone who was there, the butcher who phoned the ambulance, talks to him. It was him, apparently.

Angry and scared and pissed off and confused.

Angry at her blood on his hands, scared because there's probably a sniper looking down his scope at them right now. Pissed off because no matter how much they try, no matter how much she lets it go, he's always there. And confused. Confused at it all. At the smear of blood on the window, at the fact he's watching Kate bleed out on the ground for the second time in less than five years.

His hands paw at her cheeks, coating them in blood, trying to tempt some movement from her. He pleads. Implores her to just open her eyes. Prays to some deity that he doesn't believe in that this isn't happening. It's just a nightmare. Some terrible dream that he can't wake up from. He has to believe it. He has to believe that's what's happening because he cannot deal with the idea - the notion - that she's dead.

She's not dead.

Even as the EMT's pull him away, he struggles.

She's not dead.

* * *

How long does he sit next to that hospital gurney? It's hours, he knows that, but it could be days for all he knows. Time had stopped. Time didn't matter. Nothing mattered when his wife - his beautiful and complicated and remarkable and frustrating wife - is lying there with another bullet hole in her chest. Cold as marble. Still as stone. Out of the two of them she's supposed to be the warmest. She's always been the hot water bottle, the one who complains at his cold toes on her calf, the one who's quickest to shed the blankets in the middle of the night.

Now whatever flush she had in her cheeks has long since gone, bled out with the rest of her. Her skin is almost the same colour as the sheet she's covered in. Naked. Stripped bare. Robbed of everything. They've taken all of her jewelry away from her. Her phone, her wallet, her badge, all of it is placed in a ziploc bag and handed to him like some form of momento. They tell him that she hadn't stood a chance. She'd been incredibly lucky the last time, it had been a miracle of sorts. But no one, not even Kate Beckett is lucky enough to survive two.

He doesn't know what to do now. He's never had to deal with this. He doesn't know anything about death certificates and funerals and last will and testaments. For someone who's spent the past seven years surrounded by death, he doesn't have a very clear understanding of the process afterwards.

In the end, Jim takes pity on him.

* * *

He spends a day sleeping off the hangover.

The funeral was one of the worst experiences of his life. All these people, some that he knew, most that he didn't, dressed all in black, there and pretending like they knew her. Knew her the way that he did. They don't. They never tried. Not one of them tried to break down the wall surrounding Katherine Beckett's innermost self.

He wakes with the idea in his head. Its a stupid idea. A ridiculously stupid idea, but it's one that he's not going to back away from. Bracken has caused enough trouble in not only his, not just Kate's, but others. He's been terrorising the nation for decades. No one is going to stand up to him.

There's no one left.

No one left but him.

* * *

The gun is where he'd left it when he'd come home from the hospital, sitting on his desk. Kate usually keeps it in the safe, away from prying fingers (though the only prying fingers he knows is the Ryan's daughter, and barely scraping 12 months means she's not exactly walking around unaided. Still fully loaded, he tucks it into his waistband, covers it up with his shirt and jacket. He doesn't tell Alexis or his mother where he's going. They've left him to his grief for the past couple of days, caught up in their own mourning, they don't question his silent departure.

In the taxi he thinks that he should maybe have said goodbye to the place. He doesn't know what's going to happen today, doesn't know the consequences of his actions or whether he'll even see the place again. He should feel sad. The loft has been his home for the past umpteen years, he's watched his daughter grow up here, he's written many a best-seller within its walls, his first night with Kate (his last night with Kate), pancakes and coffees and meals and celebrations and parties, new years kisses, halloween costumes, movie nights and dinner parties. Theatre rehearsals, not that he was entirely pleased with his space being invaded by over-enthusiastic drama types. Memories fused in the walls.

He should feel sad.

He doesn't.

* * *

"It's not your fault." she whispers when the lights are out and she thinks he can't see her. "You didn't know, you didn't know"

Truth is, she's right. On more than one point. One, he can't see her. His cell is pitch black, he can barely see his hand in front of his face, let alone her standing in the corner. And he didn't know. He didn't know anything. Blissfully unaware, thinking of Thanksgiving with his family, of drinks afterwards at the old Haunt. He wasn't thinking of conspiracies and dirty politicians and murder. Maybe if he'd been aware, he'd have protected her. Taken the bullet for her. Tackled her. Never let her out of the house in the first place. But he didn't.

He'd had no idea.

* * *

He answers the taxi drivers questions sparingly, one word answers and caveman like grunts, and in the end the guy gives up and they sit in silence. The butt of his fun is digging into the small of his back and he wants nothing more than to shift it but he can't for fear of repercussion. He's been in the newspaper a lot recently, more than he'd hoped, and by the time today is over he'll probably be featured even more. Front page this time. No more page six.

The taxi drops him off around the corner, and he gives the taxi driver whatever money he has in his pocket. A couple of hundred, at least. Tells him to keep the change. He gawks at him in return.

Brackens garden is unnaturally sunny. November is cold, as usual, but the skies are bright blue and whatever leaves are left are dappled with sunlight. Unnatural, considering what he's about to do. His car is in the driveway, there's a flicker of a curtain as someone looks at him through a window. There's a guard, doorman, butler, whatever, starts to question who he is and why he's there and does he have an appointment? He takes him out with a quick blow to the side of his head with the gun.

He falls to the ground, head thumping on one of the stone borders lining a flowerbed. He doesn't care. There's no emotion, anymore. He's just empty.

"Mr. Castle."

He doesn't waste any time, points the gun straight at his head. To his credit, the man doesn't flinch. His mouth even turns up in one of those irritating, self-satisfied smirks that he wants nothing more than to punch off his face. He's going to end up doing much worse than that.

"What can I do for you?"

"Admit it it."

"Admit to what, Mr. Castle?"

"That you killed her. I want you to admit that you ordered someone to shoot Kate Beckett in cold blood."

"And then what?" he asks quizzically, his head tilted to the side like he was entirely innocent in all of this. Like he wasn't a murdering, conniving back-stabbing ass hole. "Are you going to shoot me?"

"Consider it poetic justice."

"You even sound like her." He sighs, slips his hands into his trouser pockets. Cool and casual, like he faces this every day." The police have already been called. If you're going to do anything, then I think you should do it soon. Providing, of course, you're prepared to pay the consequences."

Castle breathes through his nose, out again, steadies his grip. "I'm not the only one who needs to pay."

"Really? What proof do you have? A shard of paper with a number on it that links to me. Don't think I don't know that, Mr. Castle. I'm well aware of that supposed file. That could be anything. You have no proof. You say I'm the one killing people in cold blood, but why don't you take a good hard look at yourself? Pointing a gun at an innocent man. What is it you call it… smoking gun?"

"I don't care."

Outside there's the flash of blue and red lights, another EMT and armed police, crowding the driveway. There's shouts from outside, the sounds of heavy footfalls storming towards the room. Bracken flashes that smug grin again, thinks he's got away with it again, and that's what makes him snap. His rational unravels, whatever he had left of his sanity vanishes, his grief overwhelms him. His finger tightens on the trigger, one, two, three.

Three shots.

Three ragged tears in a tarnished suit as the man falls like a marionette with his strings cut.

Finality.

* * *

_he cries, stay with me, until I fall asleep, stay with me_

_stay with me_


End file.
